I'm not sure if this should be i386-specific, but I've noticed that NetBSD
seems to have changed the default to be "cntl-alt-del doesn't try to reboot".
This has bitten me fairly often, and been useful to me fairly rarely. I
suppose the argument is that I always have the reset button, but I really
like the idea that the machine can at least *TRY* to sync disks if it's, for
some reason, unusable. On the other hand, I can see it as a security thing -
but the argument about the reset button applies again.
After some thought, my vague consideration is that perhaps this should be
sysctl-settable, and it should be on in INSTALL and GENERIC, but easy to
disable in rc.conf or sysctl.conf. The main application would be situations
where something is wrong with a boot disk, and getty/login don't come up
as expected. (e.g., the thing -current had for a while where E0 and console
were both enabled by default on i386.)
I'm also wondering, do other machines have a similar "canonical" hook? I
assume we don't support it for security reasons...?
-s